Trout Fishing in America Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Frontispiece

  TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA

  Dedication

  The Original Cover for Trout Fishing in America

  Knock on Wood (Part One)

  Knock on Wood (Part Two)

  Red Lip

  The Kool-Aid Wino

  Another Method of Making Walnut Catsup

  Prologue to Grider Creek

  Grider Creek

  The Ballet for Trout Fishing in America

  A Walden Pond for Winos

  Tom Martin Creek

  Trout Fishing on the Bevel

  Sea, Sea Rider

  The Last Year the Trout Came up Hayman Creek

  Trout Death by Port Wine

  The Autopsy of Trout Fishing in America

  The Message

  Trout Fishing in America Terrorists

  Trout Fishing in America with the FBI

  Worsewick

  The Shipping of Trout Fishing in America Shorty to Nelson Algren

  The Mayor of the Twentieth Century

  On Paradise

  The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari

  The Salt Creek Coyotes

  The Hunchback Trout

  The Teddy Roosevelt Chingader’

  Footnote Chapter to “The Shipping of Trout Fishing in America Shorty to Nelson Algren”

  The Pudding Master of Stanley Basin

  Room 208, Hotel Trout Fishing in America

  The Surgeon

  A Note on the Camping Craze that is Currently Sweeping America

  A Return to the Cover of This Book

  The Lake Josephus Days

  Trout Fishing on the Street of Eternity

  The Towel

  Sandbox Minus John Dillinger Equals What?

  The Last Time I Saw Trout Fishing in America

  In the California Bush

  The Last Mention of Trout Fishing in America Shorty

  Witness for Trout Fishing in America Peace

  Footnote Chapter to “Red Lip”

  The Cleveland Wrecking Yard

  A Half-Sunday Homage to a Whole Leonardo da Vinci

  Trout Fishing in America Nib

  Prelude to the Mayonnaise Chapter

  The Mayonnaise Chapter

  THE PILL VERSUS THE SPRINGHILL MINE DISASTER

  Frontispiece

  Dedication

  All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

  Horse Child Breakfast

  General Custer Versus the Titanic

  The Beautiful Poem

  Private Eye Lettuce

  A Boat

  The Shenevertakesherwatchoff Poem

  Karma Repair Kit: Items 1-4

  Oranges

  San Francisco

  Xerox Candy Bar

  Discovery

  Widow’s Lament

  The Pomegranate Circus

  The Winos on Potrero Hill

  The First Winter Snow

  Death Is a Beautiful Car Parked Only

  Surprise

  Your Departure Versus the Hindenburg

  Education

  Love Poem

  The Fever Monument

  At the California Institute of Technology

  A Lady

  “Star-Spangled” Nails

  The Pumpkin Tide

  Adrenalin Mother

  The Wheel

  Map Shower

  A Postcard from Chinatown

  The Double-Bed Dream Gallows

  December 30

  The Sawmill

  The Way She Looks at It

  Yes, the Fish Music

  The Chinese Checker Players

  I’ve Never Had It Done so Gently Before

  Our Beautiful West Coast Thing

  Man

  The Silver Stairs of Ketchikan

  Hollywood

  Your Necklace Is Leaking

  Haiku Ambulance

  It’s Going Down

  Alas, Measured Perfectly

  Hey, Bacon!

  The Rape of Ophelia

  A CandleLion Poem

  I Feel Horrible. She Doesn’t

  Cyclops

  Flowers for Those You Love

  The Galilee Hitch-Hiker

  It’s Raining in Love

  Poker Star

  To England

  I Lie Here in a Strange Girl’s Apartment

  Hey! This Is What It’s All About

  My Nose Is Growing Old

  Crab Cigar

  The Sidney Greenstreet Blues

  Comets

  I Live in the Twentieth Century

  The Castle of the Cormorants

  Lovers

  Sonnet

  Indirect Popcorn

  Star Hole

  Albion Breakfast

  Let’s Voyage into the New American House

  November 3

  The Postman

  A Mid-February Sky Dance

  The Quail

  1942

  Milk for the Duck

  The Return of the Rivers

  A Good-Talking Candle

  The Horse That Had a Flat Tire

  Kafka’s Hat

  Nine Things

  Linear Farewell, Nonlinear Farewell

  Mating Saliva

  Sit Comma and Creeley Comma

  Automatic Anthole

  The Symbol

  I Cannot Answer You Tonight in Small Portions

  Your Catfish Friend

  December 24

  Horse Race

  The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster

  After Halloween Slump

  Gee, You’re so Beautiful That It’s Starting to Rain

  The Nature Poem

  The Day They Busted the Grateful Dead

  The Harbor

  The Garlic Meat Lady from

  In a Cafe

  Boo, Forever

  IN WATERMELON SUGAR

  Frontispiece

  BOOK ONE: IN WATERMELON SUGAR

  In Watermelon Sugar

  Margaret

  My Name

  Fred

  Charley’s Idea

  Sundown

  The Gentle Cricket

  Lighting the Bridges

  iDEATH

  The Tigers

  More Conversation at iDEATH

  A Lot of Good Nights

  Vegetables

  Margaret Again

  Pauline’s Shack

  A Love, a Wind

  The Tigers Again

  Arithmetic

  She Was

  A Lamb at False Dawn

  The Watermelon Sun

  Hands

  Margaret Again, Again

  Strawberries

  The Schoolteacher

  Under the Plank Press

  Until Lunch

  The Tombs

  The Grand Old Trout

  BOOK TWO: inBOIL

  Nine Things

  Margaret Again, Again, Again

  A Nap

  Whiskey

  Whiskey Again

  The Big Fight

  Time

  The Bell

  Pauline

  The Forgotten Works

  A Conversation with Trash

  In There

  The Master of the Forgotten Works

  The Way Back

  Something Is Going to Happen

  Rumors

  The Way Back Again

  Dinner That Night

  Pauline Again

  Faces

  Shack

  The Girl with the Lantern

  Chickens

  Bacon

  Prelude

  An Exchange


  The Trout Hatchery

  inBoiL’s iDEATH

  Wheelbarrow

  A Parade

  Bluebells

  Margaret Again, Again, Again, Again

  Shack Fever

  BOOK THREE: MARGARET

  Job

  Meat Loaf

  Apple Pie

  Literature

  The Way

  The Statue of Mirrors

  The Grand Old Trout Again

  Getting Fred

  The Wind Again

  Margaret’s Brother

  The Wind Again, Again

  Necklace

  Couch

  Tomorrow

  Carrots

  Margaret’s Room

  Bricks

  My Room

  The Girl with the Lantern Again

  Margaret Again, Again, Again, Again, Again

  Good Ham

  Sunrise

  Escutcheon

  Sunny Morning

  The Tomb Crew

  The Dance

  Cooks Together

  Their Instruments Playing

  About the Author

  Trout Fishing in America Copyright © 1967 by Richard Brautigan

  The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster Copyright © 1968 by Richard Brautigan

  In Watermelon Sugar Copyright © 1968 by Richard Brautigan

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  www.hmhco.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Brautigan, Richard.

  [Selections. 1989]

  Richard Brautigan’s Trout fishing in America;

  The pill versus the Springhill mine disaster;

  and, In watermelon sugar.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-395-50076-1

  ISBN 978-0-395-50076-7

  I. Title. II. Title: Trout fishing in America. III. Title: Pill versus the Springhill mine disaster. IV. Title: In watermelon sugar.

  PS3503.R2736A6 1989

  813'.54—dc19 88-38993

  CIP

  eISBN 978-0-547-52553-2

  v2.0714

  Frontispiece by Erik Weber

  Interior photographs by Edmund Shea

  Writing 14

  There are seductions that should be

  in the Smithsonian Institute,

  right next to The Spirit of St. Louis.

  The Original Cover for Trout Fishing in America

  The frontispiece of this ebook collection, which is the original cover image for Trout Fishing in America, is a photograph taken late in the afternoon, a photograph of the Benjamin Franklin statue in San Francisco’s Washington Square.

  Born 1706—Died 1790, Benjamin Franklin stands on a pedestal that looks like a house containing stone furniture. He holds some papers in one hand and his hat in the other.

  Then the statue speaks, saying in marble:

  PRESENTED BY

  H.D. COGSWELL

  TO OUR

  BOYS AND GIRLS

  WHO WILL SOON

  TAKE OUR PLACES

  AND PASS ON.

  Around the base of the statue are four words facing the directions of this world, to the east WELCOME, to the west WELCOME, to the north WELCOME, to the south WELCOME. Just behind the statue are three poplar trees, almost leafless except for the top branches. The statue stands in front of the middle tree. All around the grass is wet from the rains of early February.

  In the background is a tall cypress tree, almost dark like a room. Adlai Stevenson spoke under the tree in 1956, before a crowd of 40,000 people.

  There is a tall church across the street from the statue with crosses, steeples, bells and a vast door that looks like a huge mousehole, perhaps from a Tom and Jerry cartoon, and written above the door is “Per L’Universo.”

  Around five o’clock in the afternoon of my cover for Trout Fishing in America, people gather in the park across the street from the church and they are hungry.

  It’s sandwich time for the poor.

  But they cannot cross the street until the signal is given. Then they all run across the street to the church and get their sandwiches that are wrapped in newspaper. They go back to the park and unwrap the newspaper and see what their sandwiches are all about.

  A friend of mine unwrapped his sandwich one afternoon and looked inside to find just a leaf of spinach. That was all.

  Was it Kafka who learned about America by reading the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin . . .

  Kafka who said, “I like the Americans because they are healthy and optimistic.”

  Knock on Wood (Part One)

  As a child when did I first hear about trout fishing in America? From whom? I guess it was a stepfather of mine.

  Summer of 1942.

  The old drunk told me about trout fishing. When he could talk, he had a way of describing trout as if they were a precious and intelligent metal.

  Silver is not a good adjective to describe what I felt when he told me about trout fishing.

  I’d like to get it right.

  Maybe trout steel. Steel made from trout. The clear snow-filled river acting as foundry and heat.

  Imagine Pittsburgh.

  A steel that comes from trout, used to make buildings, trains and tunnels.

  The Andrew Carnegie of Trout!

  The Reply of Trout Fishing in America:

  I remember with particular amusement, people with three-cornered hats fishing in the dawn.

  Knock on Wood (Part Two)

  One spring afternoon as a child in the strange town of Portland, I walked down to a different street corner, and saw a row of old houses, huddled together like seals on a rock. Then there was a long field that came sloping down off a hill. The field was covered with green grass and bushes. On top of the hill there was a grove of tall, dark trees. At a distance I saw a waterfall come pouring down off the hill. It was long and white and I could almost feel its cold spray.

  There must be a creek there, I thought, and it probably has trout in it.

  Trout.

  At last an opportunity to go trout fishing, to catch my first trout, to behold Pittsburgh.

  It was growing dark. I didn’t have time to go and look at the creek. I walked home past the glass whiskers of the houses, reflecting the downward rushing waterfalls of night.

  The next day I would go trout fishing for the first time. I would get up early and eat my breakfast and go. I had heard that it was better to go trout fishing early in the morning. The trout were better for it. They had something extra in the morning. I went home to prepare for trout fishing in America. I didn’t have any fishing tackle, so I had to fall back on corny fishing tackle.

  Like a joke.

  Why did the chicken cross the road?

  I bent a pin and tied it onto a piece of white string.

  And slept.

  The next morning I got up early and ate my breakfast. I took a slice of white bread to use for bait. I planned on making doughballs from the soft center of the bread and putting them on my vaudevillean hook.

  I left the place and walked down to the different street corner. How beautiful the field looked and the creek that came pouring down in a waterfall off the hill.

  But as I got closer to the creek I could see that something was wrong. The creek did not act right. There was a strangeness to it. There was a thing about its motion that was wrong. Finally I got close enough to see what the trouble was.

  The waterfall was just a flight of white wooden stairs leading up to a house in the trees.

  I stood there for a long time, looking up and looking down, following the stairs with my eyes, having trouble believing.

  Then I knocked on my creek and heard the sound of wood.

  I ended up by being my own trout and eating the slice of bread myself.

&nb
sp; The Reply of Trout Fishing in America:

  There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t change a flight of stairs into a creek. The boy walked back to where he came from. The same thing once happened to me. I remember mistaking an old woman for a trout stream in Vermont, and I had to beg her pardon.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I thought you were a trout stream.”

  “I’m not,” she said.

  Red Lip

  Seventeen years later I sat down on a rock. It was under a tree next to an old abandoned shack that had a sheriff’s notice nailed like a funeral wreath to the front door.

  NO TRESPASSING

  4/17 OF A HAIKU

  Many rivers had flowed past those seventeen years, and thousands of trout, and now beside the highway and the sheriff’s notice flowed yet another river, the Klamath, and I was trying to get thirty-five miles downstream to Steelhead, the place where I was staying.

  It was all very simple. No one would stop and pick me up even though I was carrying fishing tackle. People usually stop and pick up a fisherman. I had to wait three hours for a ride.

  The sun was like a huge fifty-cent piece that someone had poured kerosene on and then had lit with a match and said, “Here, hold this while I go get a newspaper,” and put the coin in my hand, but never came back

  I had walked for miles and miles until I came to the rock under the tree and sat down. Every time a car would come by, about once every ten minutes, I would get up and stick out my thumb as if it were a bunch of bananas and then sit back down on the rock again.

  The old shack had a tin roof colored reddish by years of wear, like a hat worn under the guillotine. A corner of the roof was loose and a hot wind blew down the river and the loose corner clanged in the wind.

  A car went by. An old couple. The car almost swerved off the road and into the river. I guess they didn’t see many hitchhikers up there. The car went around the corner with both of them looking back at me.

  I had nothing else to do, so I caught salmon flies in my landing net. I made up my own game. It went like this: I couldn’t chase after them. I had to let them fly to me. It was something to do with my mind. I caught six.

  A little ways up from the shack was an outhouse with its door flung violently open. The inside of the outhouse was exposed like a human face and the outhouse seemed to say, “The old guy who built me crapped in here 9,745 times and he’s dead now and I don’t want anyone else to touch me. He was a good guy. He built me with loving care. Leave me alone. I’m a monument now to a good ass gone under. There’s no mystery here. That’s why the door’s open. If you have to crap, go in the bushes like the deer.”